The Discerning Clear Gaze Viveka-Khyāti
The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga - Gidi Ifergan
Gidi Ifergan [+]
Monash University
Description
In the fourth chapter, The Discerning Clear Gaze Viveka-Khyāti, I discuss discerning wisdom. Yoga practitioners pray, perform rituals, engage in physical and mental training, and cultivate virtues. Employing these practices they aim at eroding the causes of affliction (kleśas) and binding dormant mental imprints (saṃskāras) by instilling positive and mind-stilling mental imprints. These practices are, however, insufficient in themselves to release yoga practitioners from being subjected to their dormant mental imprints. This is because the identity of the sense of I-am-ness is always involved in these efforts and in their consequences. The obvious question is what kind of knowledge or insight can reveal the sense of I-am-ness involved in actions and their consequences? Because the sense of I-am-ness is itself entangled within the world of phenomena, it must be dismantled and stripped of its constituting identifications, and be completely discerned from the true Self (puruṣa). How can this knowledge be cultivated, or how can one come to settle or abide in such insight? In response to this question I sketch, map, and interpret yogic meditation, cognitive samādhi, and its categories on the way to that phase where which the discerning clear gaze may arise.